Summer Project

Well, we are a little past a third of the way into the summer and that means summer projects for us.  Today I want to share not about what my projects are, because quite frankly I haven't done much.  I wanted to take this time to brag a little on Tom's project. 

Let me give you a little background before I show you what he's been up to.  First of all, we bought our house almost 10 years ago in 2002.  It was quite the adventure buying a house for the first time.  We were pretty young and didn't know what we were doing.  For the first time that we saw our house, well let's just say that I wanted to run for the hills.  Renters were living here since the owners lived in another state and the renters didn't like very much when the house was being shown to potential buyers.  Needless to say they pretty much left all of their stuff all over the place.  We could barely even walk through certain areas because of all the stuff on the floor.  Just so you know how bad it was, there was a built in closet organizer in the master bedroom closet that I didn't even realize was there.  It was pretty bad.  Tom and I left very discouraged.

Our realtor convinced us that we needed to take another look at the house because it did have some potential.  So we went for a second look keeping in mind that all of the stuff inside the house was removable and that there were not any major defects with the house.  So we both decided to picture the house empty.  It looked a lot cleaner and not cluttered.  We decided to go through with the process.  We were pretty lucky because the owners were very anxious and we got a really great deal!!!  There were a few closing details that delayed the closing a couple of times and made things pretty crazy with leaving our apartment and moving into a house (another story for another time).

So jump forward to 2012.  We have a basement that we have always thought would be a great recreational room for when we had a family someday.  Well, now that we have Jaycee, I feel as if her toys have overtaken our house.  We have been wanting to do this for some time now, but we also didn't want to go into more debt than we already had, so we just put it off.  Well, this year we made some pretty signifcant gains in the paying down debt area of our lives.  Don't get me wrong, we still have debt, but just not the burden that we once had.  And we decided that with the money that we are saving in childcare and paying off our car, that we could use that towards supplies in finishing the basement. 

Well, Tom started researching and talking to people who have done work like this before, and decided to just take things one step at a time.  He also being the woodworking and technology teacher that he is, has decided to do all of the work himself.  Here are some pictures of his progress. 

A view of it before putting the framing up, after sealing the floor.

Another view of the room and our crazy overstuffed closet.

This is a view of the laundry room right now, but soon we won't be able to see it from here anymore.  Everything looks very messy and cluttered, which I can't stand, but I know it will be beautiful soon.

A view of the stairs going up to our living room.



Jaycee & Mollie have a hard time staying upstairs when daddy is making so much noise down here.  I don't think Mollie likes it as much as Jaycee does.

Framing.  I think that Tom really loved doing this, but it was really loud!!!

Another wall of framing.

Tools and more tools

Wiring.  I think Tom was a little nervous about this, but he did his research and I did a lot of praying.

Insulation!!!  Hopefully this will help with the noise levels when Tom is cutting boards here and there.  On a side note, Tom bought everything at Menards.  This has become one of our favorite stores.  Quality material and great prices!!!

More electrical stuff. 

Another view of insulation.

More insulation

Insulation

Starting to put insulation in the celing.

I am pretty proud of Tom and his ability to get this stuff done like this.  He is pretty handy to have around.  I have learned a lot about home improvement through this project too.  I'll give  updates as more progress comes along. 

the ehrlichs